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Art and Intimacy:

How the Arts Began
Front Cover
3 Reviews
University of Washington Press, Jan 1, 2000 - Art - 265 pages
To Ellen Dissanayake, the arts are biologically evolved propensities of human nature: their fundamental features helped early humans adapt to their environment and reproduce themselves successfully over generations. In Art and Intimacy she argues for the joint evolutionary origin of art and intimacy, what we commonly call love.

It all begins with the human trait of birthing immature and helpless infants. To ensure that mothers find their demanding babies worth caring for, humans evolved to be lovable and to attune themselves to others from the moment of birth. The ways in which mother and infant respond to each other are rhythmically patterned vocalizations and exaggerated face and body movements that Dissanayake calls rhythms and sensory modes.

Rhythms and modes also give rise to the arts. Because humans are born predisposed to respond to and use rhythmic-modal signals, societies everywhere have elaborated them further as music, mime, dance, and display, in rituals which instill and reinforce valued cultural beliefs. Just as rhythms and modes coordinate and unify the mother-infant pair, in ceremonies they coordinate and unify members of a group.

Today we humans live in environments very different from those of our ancestors. They used ceremonies (the arts) to address matters of serious concern, such as health, prosperity, and fecundity, that affected their survival. Now we tend to dismiss the arts, to see them as superfluous, only for an elite. But if we are biologically predisposed to participate in artlike behavior, then we actually need the arts. Even -- or perhaps especially -- in our fast-paced, sophisticated modern lives, the arts encourage us to show that we care about important things.

Ellen Dissanayakeis Visiting Scholar at the University of Washington and has recently held Distinguished Visiting Professorships in the College of Fine Arts at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, and at Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana. She has lectured and taught in a variety of settings, including the New School for Social Research in New York City, the National Arts School in Papua New Guinea, and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. She is the author ofHomo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes FromandWhat Is Art For?

  

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Review: Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began

User Review  - Whitney - Goodreads

This book gets 3 stars for its fascinating subject and provocative, innovative perspective on the arts and human nature. It also gets 3 stars because it is rather redundant at times overly simplistic ... Read full review

Review: Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began

User Review  - Julie - Goodreads

Brilliant perspective and really makes the case for the importance of the art experience for everyone! Read full review

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Selected pages

Contents

MUTUALITY
19
BELONGING
51
FINDING AND MAKING MEANING
72
HANDSON COMPETENCE
99
ELABORATING
129
TAKING THE ARTS SERIOUSLY
167
Toward a Naturalistic Aesthetics
205
Notes
226
References Cited
237
Index of Names
251
Index of Subjects
257
Copyright

Common terms and phrases

ability activities adaptive adults aesthetic altricial America's Most Wanted ancestral animals Arnhem Land artists associated baby baby talk beauty become behavior belonging biological body bonobos brain called ceremonies chapter cognitive communication competence contemporary cultural cupules dance described Dissanayake elaborations emotional emotionally engage environment evolutionary evolutionary psychology evolved example experience feel female hands hominid human evolution human nature hunter-gatherer Igbo images important individual interaction interests Kalapalo Kaluli Komar and Melamid lives look love and art males mate mbari meaning ment mind modal modern mother-infant mutuality mothers and infants movements one's Owerri paint Paleolithic Papua New Guinea participation person Photograph physical play primates psychological relevant require respond rhythmic rhythmic-modal rhythms and modes ritual sense sexual shared signals skills smile social song sounds symbols systems and stories Temiar things tion traditional societies Trevarthen visual vocal words Yekuana Yolngu York young

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References from web pages

UW Press: Art and Intimacy
Art and Intimacy How the Arts Began. Ellen Dissanayake. To Ellen Dissanayake, the arts are biologically evolved propensities of human nature: their ...
www.washington.edu/ uwpress/ search/ books/ DISARC.html

Ellen Dissanayake
"Ellen Dissanayake's intriguing piece of scholarship Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began presents an original framework for advocating the importance of ...
www.ellendissanayake.com/ books/ art_and_intimacy.php

Nancy Easterlin - Big Guys, Babies, and Beauty - Philosophy and ...
Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began, by Ellen Dissanayake; xvii & 265 pp. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000, $29.95. ...
muse.jhu.edu/ journals/ philosophy_and_literature/ v025/ 25.1easterlin.html

Arts & Activities: Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began
ART AND INTIMACY: How the Arts Began (2000; $29.95), by Ellen Dissanayake. University of Washington Press, Seattle, WA 98195. Ellen Dissanayake has authored ...
findarticles.com/ p/ articles/ mi_m0HTZ/ is_4_135/ ai_n6068950/ print

nordic journal of music therapy
Dissanayake, Ellen (2000). Art and Intimacy. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Illus., hardcover, 268 pp., $29.95. ...
www.njmt.no/ bookreview_2001006.html

Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began. Ellen Dissanayake ...
Institution: Google Indexer Sign In as Personal Subscriber · Oxford Journals · Humanities · British Journal of Aesthetics · Volume 41, Number 3; Pp. 343-345 ...
bjaesthetics.oxfordjournals.org/ cgi/ reprint/ 41/ 3/ 343

International Journal of Education & the Arts
Art and intimacy: How the arts began. Seattle, WA: University of Washington. Press. Dissanayake, E. (1992). Homo aestheticus: Where art comes from and why. ...
www.ijea.org/ v6n15/ v6n15.pdf

The New Humanities Reader - Link-O-Mat - Ellen Dissanayake
Her three books, What Is Art For (1988), Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes From and Why (1995), and Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began (2000), ...
www.newhum.com/ for_students/ link_o_mat/ dissanayake.html

Syllabus
Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000 Langer, Susanne K., Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling Volume I, ...
www.icscanada.edu/ faculty/ syllabus/ ?f06/ ac_ra06f.htm

The Dance of Evolution, or How Art Got Its Start - New York Times
She does not have a doctorate, but she has published widely, and her books —the most recent one being “Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began” — are ...
www.nytimes.com/ 2007/ 11/ 27/ science/ 27angi.html?pagewanted=print

About the author (2000)

ART

Bibliographic information

QR code for Art and Intimacy
TitleArt and Intimacy: How the Arts Began
A McLellan book
AuthorEllen Dissanayake
Editionillustrated
PublisherUniversity of Washington Press, 2000
ISBN0295979119, 9780295979113
Length265 pages
Subjects ›  › 

Art / History / General
  
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